17 August 2006

England: 4 Greece: 0 - Nothing To See Here

Despite the inevitable hype, chants of 'Are You Watching Eriksson' and trumpet blowing from certain sections of the media (those that use print and the colour red as backgrounds to their titles), England beating Greece 4: 0 is not the second coming. Nor is it the beginning of a major new era for English football.So can we stop all the hype and nonsense now, please?They weren't, as The Sun suggests, 'Mac's Marvels' ; it wasn't the beginning of a new era."... in a manner he [Steve McClaren] could only have dreamed about..." as The Mirror said. It was a fairly good showing against a fairly poor team. That's it. The really interesting thing about it was it looked a more organised team performance with left footers playing on the left and wide players playing wide with a genuine holding midfielder, um, holding.Funnily enough, there was a regular football column in The News of The World during The World Cup that suggested this exact formation with this exact combination of players. The author: Terry Venables. Now, there IS a coincidence.